Scan shows ancient royal has two faces

Published on Tuesday 31 March 2009 23:10

RESEARCHERS have used a modern medical procedure to uncover a secret within one of ancient Egypt's most treasured artworks – the bust of Nefertiti has two faces.

Scientists discovered a detailed stone carving that differs from the external stucco face when they performed a computed tomography, or CT, scan on the bust.

The findings, published yesterday in the monthly journal Radiology, are the first to show that the stone core of the statue is a highly detailed sculpture of the queen.

"Until we did this scan, how deep the stucco was and whether a second face was underneath it was unknown," said Dr Alexander Huppertz, who led the research. "The hypothesis was that the stone underneath was just a support."

The differences between the faces, though slight – creases at the corners of the mouth, a bump on the nose of the stone version – suggest that someone expressly ordered the adjustments between stone and stucco when royal sculptors immortalised the wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten 3,300 years ago, Dr Huppertz, director of the Imaging Science Institute at Berlin's Charite hospital and medical school, said. "Changes were made, but some of them are positive, others are negative."

John Taylor, a curator for Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum in London, said the scan raises interesting questions about why the features were adjusted.

"One could deduce that the final version was considered in some way more acceptable than the 'hidden' one, though caution is needed in attempting to explain the significance of these changes," he said.

The bust underwent a similar CT scan in 1992. But the more primitive scanner used then only generated cross-sections of the statue every five millimetres – not enough detail to reveal the subtlety of the carving hidden just 1-2mm under the stucco.